Week 24. Feb 11-15

Welcome to another great week in Kindergarten! Thanks to all parents who came last Wednesday for our Family Math Night! It was wonderful for us to see all of you having fun playing math games with our kindergarteners. Thank you also for the feedback! Here are some photos:

Important reminders:

• After School Activities - Session 2. The last day for ASAs will be Thursday, February 22. 

• Mystery Readers Wanted: KG classes still have lots of openings for parents to come in and read (or do a fun activity of your choice!). Sign up on the Mystery Reader tabs at the top of this page.

• Please keep sending animal photos for our science unit! We love them so far!

Learning This Week

Writing Workshop

This week, writers will start revising and editing their writing to publish a book of opinions by the end of our unit. They have been meeting with their writing partners to practice sharing their book with others. This book be a collection of opinions. 

For publishing, writers focus on key elements that writers do all the time: writing with lowercase letters, bumping lines, using sight words, and adding finger spaces. After making their writing the best they can, they will work on designing their books, choose a title page and look at details that will make their book more appealing for the audience.




Reading Workshop

Our Super Readers are learning so much about nonfiction texts! They are getting very good at sharing books with partners and retelling what they read. Students are practicing using sentence stems like:
“This reminds me of...” 
“This page is all about…”
“I thought there would be a page about…”
“This is just like…”

This week students will compare getting more from pictures by asking “Does the picture match the words?” and “What EXTRA information can I get from the picture?” We will also have dedicated time for students to explore a variety of nonfiction books to record their “wonder questions.”


Word Study

As we approach the end of Trimester 2. We will be assessing all students to determine their understanding of spelling patterns. These assessments will allow us to differentiate the word study each student needs to work on. Every Thursday, we will send these sorts home for you to see the work your child is doing and have conversations about their learning.




Math

Students will continue to practice with number bonds and number stories as they learn strategies for addition and subtraction. Topic D introduces formal subtraction concepts including writing and solving expressions and equations. Mathematicians will begin at the concrete level with students acting out take away stories and working at the pictorial level crossing off to see what remains. 

This week, students will be decomposing number 7 and 8 using 5-group drawings by hiding a part or crossing it off, and record each decomposition with a drawing and subtraction equation, or as we call them “number sentence”.

They will also practice fluency games during Math Centers, while teachers complete individual assessments.









Science

This week is very exciting in science! Our chicks will be hatching soon and we will make lots of observations in our science journals about what happens when they hatch and begin to move around! We will also welcome a real scientist into the classroom, Mr. Balazs’ wife, who is a real Marine Biologist! She studies bottlenose dolphins, which is perfect for our own KG animal experts. We can’t wait to ask her all about what it is like to be a real scientist. Students will also have time to read their favorite nonfiction animal books from our libraries and watch some incredible short videos about the animal kingdom!



As always, thank you for reading our newsletters and feel free to email us with questions or feedback!

Ms. Ana, Ms. Paola, and Mr. Balazs